Proposed EPA Rule Would Impact 51 Percent Of Wetlands

Ponds like this one in Wisconsin would no longer be covered because they are not always filled with water.

Joshua Mayer

The Clean Water Act is a federal law that gives the EPA authority to regulate pollution that affects the waters of the United States. But exactly what that last phrase means has been the subject of a long and contentious debate.

Now, the EPA is proposing a definition of “waters of the United States” that would remove roughly eighteen percent of streams and over half of all wetlands from the purview of the Clean Water Act.

How did we get here?

“When Congress wrote the Clean Water Act, they never defined the word water,” Ariel Wittenberg explained to Living Lab Radio. Wittenberg has been covering this issue for Energy and Environment News.